Anyone watching us would have wondered what we were up to.
We’d spent yesterday in the Big South
Fork trying to follow old, obscure trails through the woods north of
Oneida. Last night we’d backpacked a short distance down the John Muir Trail from
Leatherwood Ford to camp by the river. This morning we broke camp and were now
driving to the opposite corner of the park, our destination the obscure Mill
Creek Trailhead.
The unusual configuration was the result of one of our
compulsions. We like to explore new places, especially on foot or by bike. This
has led us to try to hike every trail on the map in several of our favorite
hiking areas. Our first venture was the well-known Smokies 900 milers, where
the goal is to complete every trail on the current edition of the Smokies trail
map. We’d both begun hiking in the Smokies before we’d met, but we decided the
right way to do this was to hike all the trails together, something we had
completed by 2002.
The Smokies map was followed by two smaller projects; hiking
all the trails in the combined Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock and Citico Creek Wildernesses
(2005) and then hiking all the trails in Frozen Head State park (2005). After
our map marking lay dormant for a while, I decided to try the Big South Fork,
and Jean reluctantly at first, agreed. Knowing that these compulsions can take
over one’s free time we both wanted to let this project move slowly and we gave
ourselves no time limit to finish it.
The Big South Fork has long been a go to area for
backpacking for us so much of our early mileage was on backpacking trips
planned to pick up long loops that would tough to reach by day hikes or via
long tedious drives. Jean got some spectacular help from the BSF Visitor Center
staff, especially from Howard Ray Duncan who seemed intimate with every corner of the park. Thanks to them
we enjoyed many awesome campsites and were able to backpack trails that saw few
hikers.
As we marked off the core hiking trails we realized one of
the key differences between the Big South Fork and other parks. In the Smokies
or Frozen Head you can go into the park office an buy a map that clearly shows
all the hiking trails and simply go out and hike them. You can total up the
trail mileage and know exactly how much hiking you’ll need to do. For the
Smokies there is even a guidebook written just for the 900 milers.
As a National Recreation Area, BSF is managed differently.
There are hiker only trails, trails that allow horses, trails that allow
mountain bikes, multi-purpose trails that allow vehicles and even wagon trails.
The simple thing would have been to just complete the ~141 miles of hiking
trails. But to do that efficiently we’d be using some of the other trail types,
so what to do with them? We decided to hike all the BSF trails adding 182 miles
of horse trails, 101 miles of multiuse trails, 24 miles of mountain bike trails,
and five miles of wagon trails to our plate.
So how to complete these various types of trails? We are
mountain bikers, but neither of us had ever ridden a horse or had any
inclination to do so, and of course we didn’t own a wagon. Should we allow
ourselves to simply drive over the multiuse trails where this was allowed? That
doesn’t sound very sporting.
Not surprisingly, we ended up deciding that we would walk or
bike all the trails, adjusting each trip to the condition of the trail we
planned to hike. In the end we biked the wagon trail, many of the multiuse
trails and some of the horse trails, then hiked the remainder. Gravel roads in
the BSF are superbly maintained so those were perfect for biking. We got lucky
and hit many of the horse trails in winter, or right after major maintenance,
and so were able to ride many of them enjoyably. The rutted, muddy, and most
popular horse trails we mostly walked. Still, we never quite knew what to
expect on some of these trails. Even the innocuous sounding Wagon Trail, would prove
a challenge as it was the scene of our only bear attack.
Another difference between the BSF and other parks is the
surrounding land units. We decided “our map” for the project would be the
current version of the BSF Trails Illustrated map. That map shows several other
land units including Pickett State Park, Pickett State Forest, Pogue Creek, and
the Daniel Boone National Forest. What to do about the trails that connected
all these units? I was more familiar with Pickett having done some adventure
racing there in the 1990s, and also knew many of the surrounding DBNF trails
from my work on writing “50 Hikes in Kentucky” so I felt that we should add all
these trails to the list as well. Jean, having more sense, was skeptical of
this ever expanding list. We eventually compromised by settling on US 27 as the
eastern boundary of our quest, thus avoiding having to complete the entire
Sheltowee Trace, among the myriad of DBNF connecting trails, but including the
Pickett, Pouge Creek and other DBNF trails for a total of around 700 miles.
With our goal finally in place we began to complete our trails
more seriously. By 2013 we were travelling more often to the BSF and were
adding day hikes planned to allow us to mark off as many new trails as
possible. At this stage we realized the final key difference between the BSF
and other areas. While the BSF has a travel management plan that defines the
official trail network and this network is shown on the Trails Illustrated map,
this official network doesn’t always match what is on the ground.
The TI map shows multiuse trails in purple. Most of these are
well maintained gravel roads leading to various features. Many of the dead
end multiuse trails are a different
story. We found some of these deadenders to be totally nonexistent. We both are
experienced off trail hikers with several hundred miles of off trail hiking in
the Smokies and other areas but often could not simply find these supposedly
vehicle legal trails. In other cases, the road were so covered with deadfall
(often downed pine beetle killed trees) as to be obviously impassable for
several previous years. We did our best to follow these trails, but in several
cases did not bother to complete the route of an obviously nonexistent trail.
Another issue with the BSF map conversely was that it did
not show many trails heavily used by horse riders. We met many horse riders
during our hikes and rides, and they were courteous and helpful to us, but it
is fair to say that they don’t use the park maps or stay on official park
trails. We found several networks of trails in the Honey Creek, Darrow Ridge and
Spruce Ridge area that were not on the TI map. We decided that for our project
we would not have to hike these trails since they were not part of the map.
However, we ended up using unofficial horse trails several times to complete
loops that we did need for our map.
On this weekend we hoped to finally complete our map. On
Saturday we had headed north of Oneida to walk the little used and obscure Cliff
Terry and Hurricane Ridge East multiuse trails. Now we headed to the little if
ever used Mill Creek Trailhead to hike the almost completely unknown Tar Kiln
Trail, the western end of the O&W Trail and make a loop with the
hypothesized Old Tar Kiln unofficial horse trail.
The loop we hoped to walk had required more planning than
most hikes in our quest. We’d previously walked the O&W trail west from
Zenith (why didn’t we plan to finish our map there?) to Mill Creek and Jean was
sure the O&W did not extend any further west than that. I’d seen a horse
trail map that showed the trail should continue west at least to an old trail shown
on the topo. Some wishful viewing of satellites maps showed that the old trail
might still be used and thus would allow us to hike a loop rather than two long
out and back sections on the O&W and Tar Kiln trails.
Mill Creek Trailhead
The Mill Creek TH is located off the Mt Helen Road and north
of the White Oak housing development. We
parked in a large lot near a new looking display board. The trail led 0.4 mile
down an old road to a shallow concrete ford of North White Oak Creek and then to
intersect with the O&W trail. Though there is no park maintenance on the
O&W to the west we could see horse traffic did follow the old railroad bed that
way, good news for our proposed return route. We turned east to follow the
O&W trail for 0.7 mile to an unofficial sign for the NPS Tar Kiln Trail.
Fording North White Oak Creek
We climbed the loose, rocky trail for 0.4 mile to a gate
near the top of the bluff line. A spur trail led south and the gate was easily
by passed by ATVs. Once above the bluff line the Tar Kiln Trail was hard packed
sand in its flat sections and had some potential for being mountain bikable.
The informal “Old Tar Kiln” trail was marked with a user sign, so again we were
confident that we would be able to complete our proposed loop.
The Upper Part of Tar Kiln Trail
We followed the Tar Kiln Trail west to a prominent sign marking
the park boundary. There our quest was complete, and we celebrated with a
morning beer (while standing outside the park boundary, of course). After ten
years or so of effort it was time to reflect on all the amazing places we’d
seen along the way. The worlds of the hikers and horse riders rarely merge in the park, would
we have ever visited the trails used by the other half if we’d just stuck to
the hiking trails? Would we have visited Buffalo Arch or Pouge Creek if we’d
just stayed on the trails in the BSF? And what about all the great campsites
that the day hikers never see?
Complete!
Finishing hiking map or completing a long trail is a mixed
blessing. Of course, there is the satisfaction of completing a worthy challenge
long anticipated. In our case it was likely that no one before us had tried to
hike all the BSF trails, much less expanded their goal include all the other
types of trails in the park or including the surrounding trails.
But the flip side of finishing a hiking a map is the
question of what next? Does this mean that there won’t be any new trails to
walk, new features to discover or new adventure to be had? Jean and I had
learned from completing all the trails in the Smokies that finishing the park map
is more of a start than an end. With all the trails explored its time to learn
about the park at a whole different level. In the Smokies we had made the
transition quickly to exploring off trail, where story of the pre-park history
is more easily seen and some of the park’s best flower display lay undisturbed.
In a relatively young park like the Big South Fork we can
watch the impacts of the logging, mining, and farming eras fade from memory as
the forests recovery, the old roads are reclaimed by nature, and the stories of
the mines and farms become forgotten. But by exploring the park off the
maintained trails we still have the opportunity to wonder at the amazing bounty
of backcountry geologic features such as arches and caves, visit the nearly
forgotten mining sites or the long abandoned farms of early settlers.
With this promise of more adventure ahead Jean and I walked
back to the start of the Old Tar Kiln Road and headed out to try and complete
our loop. Old Tar Kiln proved to be the remnant of an old road, though not the
same one that is shown nearby on the current topo map. Just before reaching the
junction with the O&W railroad bed there are a scenic set of cliffs.
The End of the O&W Railroad Grade in the Big South Fork
We could see some horse traffic on the railroad bed to the
west so we followed it to the point where the it crosses to the south side of
North White Oak Creek. Here the steel frame of the RR bridge is still in place
covered by years of fallen branches. As the property on the south side of the
creek is not part of the park, we turned
around here and walked the O&W back to the ford at Mill Creek and up the
trail back to our car.
Our Route for the Day in Yellow
